Halloween Get-Up

As a child, I spent my Halloween nights over at my Aunt Suzie's. There, my cousins Mikey and D.C. and John would roam the streets of Torrance and come back with Big Brown Bags full of candy. I never ate much candy. I still don't eat much candy. But there was something not-to-be-missed about those Halloweens. There was a guy who always decked his house out to the nines; cobwebs, mummies, dry ice. It smelled like Halloween back then. My costumes (Zorro, Skeletor, a ghost) would have glowstick sauce on them and my tongue would be coated with the taste of toxic chemicals from biting through the plastic.

Once my mom took me to the Galleria mall dressed as an ewok. I was very little.

Or Halloween was also Knott's Scary Farm when I was a teenager. Trying to figure out if I was more scared of the shaker can sounds clamboring from the darkness or my own sweaty palms. I remember making out with Katherine Caballero on the dinosaur ride which, sadly, is very much now a real ghost. Or taking big charter bus excursions to the theme park and having all these kids get drunk in the back. And then having to be the one of the only sober ones and running through the park rounding everyone up because the Asian driver wouldn't leave without everyone checked off his list. I felt like a parent that night, which sucked. But also there was the fact that I lost my virginity that night. The good with the bad.

Halloween is intertwined with Dani's birthday, as well. I used to resent that.

And I was always home for Halloween during college because we had Fall Break. No one else was home, usually, and so I'd hand out candy to the three or four groups that straggled to our home.

Lately, my mom has been going nuts with decorating for Halloween. I wonder if it makes her feel better about something missing in her life. Or if it's just nostalgia. I like that it makes her happy.

So, anyway, I hate Halloween these days. It doesn't smell like Halloween anymore. Just Red Bull and vodka. And I don't want to sound like a prude scrooge, but I'm pretty annoyed with the crotch grinding, skimp clothing festival it becomes at this age. I was at parties all over this city this past week, at some West Villiage fancy shmancy apartments and at a place called Crobar (which played unce music until I had a headache), none of them actually on Halloween, and I didn't have any fun. The Villiage Halloween Parade was interesting, but just bodies and bodies and bodies rubbing on mine with this slow friction I can't stand. Bahumbug.

I hear Sydney was a cat. I would have liked to have seen that.

Anyway, I bought some warm clothes for the coming winter. And that was my costume. Just me keeping warm. My Halloween get-up: